“You’re so lucky!”

That’s the line I’ve heard repeatedly over the last two days. Along with: “wow, you must be a cat.”

Of course, for the people left behind, in Sendai city, in the Tohoku region, life has been nothing like that. No luck for those who have survived. For them, there is no charm in being stuck in the wake of Friday’s massive 8.9 earthquake, and the multiple aftershocks of Mag-6 or more that have followed. For them, at the moment, there is debris in the roads, days and nights spent in refugee centers, no running water, or open gas lines, or electricity. Life after the quake and tsunami in Tohoku is not easy at all.

Cut off from them, as I am now, with no working phone service and much of the Internet down, I can only pray for the people I left behind on that day.

It started without any pretense or clear definition on Friday, March 11^th, with this post:

A week later, Friday, March 18^th, 2 a.m., and the group now has 654 posts. It also has a name:

and a description:

After an extended hiatus—too much life lived writing about life lived out on the road—I’m back. And just in time to hit the road again, and begin collecting more material to write about.

Thus, news of further travels, will I soon report. Promise.

Hey, promises I am good for. Truly. It may take time, but I do stay true to my word. For instance, that book I’ve been promising loyal readers for two years now has finally been published. It includes my most memorable moments and insights culled from travel on five continents over the past five years. And, the added bonus is that some of those moments were originally reported in some form in this blog. Stories about people, places, practices, philosophies—the works. Like the subtitle says—the journey of life—so, basically, everything you’d want from a travel book, and more. Truly.

Well, let’s see . . . I came inches from sliding off the mossy pier into the frothing Tagus River . . .

Losing my glasses, busting open my camera, bruising my hip, gumming up my shorts, making my shirt sopping wet. Leading to one embarrassed, unsteady walk through the gawking gallery.

Then I witnessed the picked-pocket that went awry just off Augusta Street. Leading a stream of curiosity-seekers on a chase to view the impassioned altercation between would-be thief and victim, under the uneasy, though occasionally bemused policeman’s eye . . .

This just in: the world’s most expensive cities, 2010 version. Places you would not want to go to if you weren’t required to, or else if you were intent on making a vacation dollar (or peso or euro) stretch.

Just my luck: four of the top seven (Tokyo=#1, Nagoya=#3, Yokohama=#4, and Kobe=#7) are in the country in which I live; so to make my yen elongate rather than eviscerate, I took off for . . . Singapore?

Well, it was in the neighborhood.